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The guerrilla artwork includes “stars” for MoMA trustee Leon Black, arts patron Les Wexner, and over a dozen other individuals mentioned in the Epstein files.
WASHINGTON, DC — On Sunday, March 1, a “Jeffrey Epstein Walk of Shame” appeared in Farragut Square, a public park located near the White House. Waterproof stickers resembling the terrazzo stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame are printed with Epstein’s likeness below the names and titles of politicians, billionaires, arts patrons, and other figures mentioned in the recently released batch of 3 million files related to the convicted sex offender.
The installation names around 20 people in total, including Epstein himself, sex trafficker and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, arts patron Les Wexner, billionaire and Museum of Modern Art trustee Leon Black, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, film producer Harvey Weinstein, former Prince Andrew (who was arrested earlier this month and stripped of his royal titles), and former President Bill Clinton. Each star includes a QR code linking either to evidence connecting the individual to Epstein or to the Department of Justice’s Epstein Library. As of publication, no one has claimed ownership for the work.
The stickers dot the sidewalks surrounding a bronze statue of the park’s namesake, David Glasgow Farragut, a Union naval commander in the Civil War. The sculpture was created in 1881 by artist Vinnie Ream, who became the first woman to receive an artwork commission from the US government when she was selected to sculpt the marble statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Capitol Rotunda in 1886.
When Hyperallergic visited the “Jeffrey Epstein Walk of Shame” on Tuesday afternoon, the star with billionaire Elon Musk’s name was partially ripped up, but the QR code linking to the Department of Justice website and a 2012 email exchange between Epstein and Musk was intact. Musk’s star was reportedly torn off within hours of the stickers’ installation in Farragut Square.
The work is not the first piece of protest art related to the Epstein files in Washington, DC. In January, a 10-foot-tall (~3-meter-tall) Epstein birthday card appeared on the National Mall, a replica of a card bearing Donald Trump’s signature and a lewd outline of a woman’s body. A sculpture depicting Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands first appeared on the National Mall last year and has reappeared several more times after being removed by US Park Police. Both works were created by Secret Handshake, a local resistance artist collective.
Hyperallergic has reached out to Secret Handshake to inquire about whether the group is behind the project and to the National Parks Service, which addresses permits for public artworks.
